News From the Street: How People Approach the News Today

In a lively exchange for @TruTake, host Donald delved into how people navigate misinformation in the age of social media. Many passersby in the streets of New York shared thoughtful insights on their personal approach to consuming and evaluating news.

Takeaway

Interviewees highlight a growing divide in news consumption. Many participants discuss the distrust of news through social media and corporations such as TikTok and Facebook as these provide echo chambers and polarization of information. Many prefer trusted outlets such as The New York Times, and etc, but access to these news sources come at a financial cost. Participants emphasized the importance of media literacy highlighting skills like identifying primary sources, questioning content creators motives, and recognizing skeptical material to combat misinformation. This generation has a difficult time separating primary sources from untrustworthy news sources falling into an echo chamber. 

What do you think?
What steps do you think we, as social media companies, individuals or communities, can take to improve media literacy and encourage more open, nuanced conversations in a polarized digital world?

Should high-quality news be free, or is it worth the cost for trusted sources?Join us in the conversation below! 

Donald: “Misinformation’s everywhere. How do you approach the news?”

Anand: “That’s a really good question. Boy, you know, I almost can’t trust it anymore. So, I don’t approach the news casually. There are certain sources I know I can trust—like CNN, the New York Times, and primary sources like academic journals. I think that makes a difference, but maybe it’s just because I have access to those resources.

I definitely avoid Facebook and TikTok for news. That’s where you get a lot of misinformation. I just don’t trust those platforms. So for me, it’s all about trusted, primary news sources.”

Donald: “How many monthly subscriptions to news do you have?”

Anand: “I have three.”

Donald: “Are they all under $10 a month?”

Anand: “Yes.”

Donald: “So, in total, you’re only spending, like, thirty dollars a month on information?”

Anand: “Yeah, that’s true.”

Donald: “But you feel you have better information than the average person?”

Anand: “I do. But, you know, even $30 a month isn’t feasible for everyone. That’s the issue—spending money on news might not be okay for someone on a tight budget. But for me, I’m willing to pay to ensure I’m getting good information.”

Donald: “Do you think it’s a good thing that information is becoming more expensive? Like, you have to pay for it?”

Anand: “No, no. It’s terrible. I mean, I pay for it because I enjoy reading, and I value high-quality news. But it’s not accessible to kids or people who don’t have internet access or money for subscriptions. It creates a huge barrier to reliable information.”

Chris: “I don’t think we need a new app.”

Donald: “I'm building an app called True Take and I'm looking for beta testers and people to just, like, pick it apart and, like, tell me the stuff. Would you want to sign up?”

Chris: “Of course!”

Donald: “Awesome. Okay let’s walk over here real quick.”

Chris: “I’m sorry, I didn’t know. A new app is not going to save us.” *laugh*

Donald: “Do you think the way we collectively come to conclusions today is pretty. You know.”

Chris: “It’s messy. It’s messy. I think especially with social media, we're quite polarized and it's difficult to have nuance, complex thoughts about subjects. And I think now more than ever, most topics are complex and nuanced. And it's difficult to arrive at that place because we have to be in a very black or white.”

Donald: “What do you think opens the door to getting in that space, that head space, which is where you're kind of not questioning or you have a more open mind? How do you think we do that with our current apps, or do we need a new app to do that?”

Chris: “I don't think we need a new app. I think the apps, the way they're set up today, create kind of an echo chamber for us, particularly TikTok. I think media consumption, media literacy is crucial. I know my generation, I graduated high school 2014. We were really drilled into media consumption and knowing how to resource different information, knowing whether it's legitimate or not. And I think the generation before and after us, I think the generations before and after us haven't quite gotten the same media training. So it's difficult to speak to them if they can believe everything that they're consuming. And there are people taking advantage of those groups of people who just consume everything that they're given.

I mean, people will only believe that they need something if they're told by the people that are telling them things that they need something. And I don't know that every group is interested in educating their base.”

Donald: “You point to a really interesting concept, which is people trust other people.”

Chris: “Yes”

Donald: “They don't trust companies anymore.”

Chris: “I don't think so. Absolutely not. I think regardless of where you are politically, I think there's a growing distrust of corporations or groups or things that are above us, that are bigger than us.”

Latrice: “Like, I don't see the need to, you know, beat around the bush. Like, if somebody is BSing you, then call them out. Call a spade a spade.”

Donald: “Okay, so right now we have, like, two social media apps, Facebook and X. And they're like, where everyone gets their news right now. Right. Which one do you use?”

Latrice: “So there. There's so much information out there. And I understand it can be overwhelming sometimes, but the fundamentals have not changed. They're still the same.”

Donald: “So if the fundamentals haven't changed, what do you think we need to be doing online to kind of fight what's going on?”

Latrice: “Understanding primary sources. For example, when you see a video, where did that video come from? You know, if. If somebody's shooting that video, okay, what are their credentials? Do they have credentials? Is it AI like, just basic questions like that? Where's this information? What is the person's motivation for sharing that video or sharing that photo? Just question things like that.”

Cynthia: “People these days are followers. They don't think for themselves.”

Donald: “Do you think fake news is a real threat to democracy or is that just fear mongering?”

Cynthia: “That's a great question. Not necessarily. Like I don't think you have to. It's not everything you have to believe on the Internet. Like you just need to form your own opinions on things. Don't take other people's opinions as facts or just because someone says it's fake doesn’t mean I should now think, yeah, it's definitely fake. People are like people these days are followers. They don't think for themselves. So take it how you want, to be honest.”

Donald: “You seem pretty confident in your opinion. It's like, I don't know, do you stand out from your friends as being a bit more unaffected by fake news?”

Cynthia: “Sometimes, especially obviously we're in a more social society. Like everyone's on social media. You just have to take things with a grain of salt these days. Like, you know, like people just post, they post things as facts. So again it's up to you to make and form your own opinions of things. But no, like I'm not too fussed about like what's on the Internet. Like usually if I want to fact check something, I'll search it up, you know. But yeah, that's me. Like I'm not too phased by other people's opinions that much.”

JP: ‘You may not care about, like, disinformation, but disinformation cares about you. How do you combat that? And I thought that was like an interesting way of saying it, where it's like, if you're as fully transparent as you can be about, like, what your views are and what your biases are, then you allow other people to interpret it within that context and framework. And so it's, you know, it's one way to combat it.”

Donald: “One of the things that the Surgeon General actually said a couple weeks ago was everything that's ranked by engagement should be given a flag, like a warning label, kind of like with nicotine, with smoking, with other things. Do you think that's a good idea and do you think platforms will actually do that?”

JP: “I think that is a good idea. It was really interesting. I remember when McDonald's, when that whole thing happened, where the nutrition labels, you go to fast food rest, you go to a fast food place and you want to order your food. And then I remember one time being in a drive through, and then I remember seeing the nutrition label for the first time where it was just like, oh, you're about to insert a thousand calories into your body. And I literally was like, never mind. Like, I went for like the, you know, like the parfait or whatever like that. So it had an effect on my behavior. And so I think about things like that, like when you actually have something that, you know, just a little metadata or just something that just kind of nudges you a little bit and in a different direction than you were originally going to go.”

“Because right now it's like we just have no, you know, speed bumps, right? It's like we're just going, right? But there's nothing to like, really sit in between, like, you know, the intention and actually, like, publishing, you know, what we're trying to get out. And so, yeah, I think it could have an effect. And then, you know, when we think about, like, virality, you know, how things go viral and how they propagate themselves, I think even like a 1 percentage, like, change in, like, people that, like, thought about, like, something and they didn't do it can have a mass effect. So it's kind of like that butterfly effect where I kind of see it like that.”

Donald: “Okay, that makes a lot of sense.”